Chapter Nineteen
“Sir. Sir. Mr. Darcy .” The voice arrived first, low and urgent, as if from the end of a long passage. Then the pressure of fingers. Then light, unwelcome and thin, along the edge of his vision.
Darcy drew a deep breath that caught in his chest. His eyes opened upon the dim shape of his chamber, the soot-stained mantel, the dying embers in the grate.
The candle he had set upon the side table had long guttered out.
His neck ached; his legs had gone numb. He was still in the chair where he had sat down after his meeting with Miss Bennet.
“Sir, I beg your pardon, but you must wake.” Anders’s concerned face resolved itself above him. Behind him, the latch of the parlour door hung open. The rattle of harness and shouted orders drifted in from the yard. The man’s hand lay upon his shoulder.
“What is it?” Darcy’s tongue felt thick. His own voice sounded strange in his ears. “Has something happened?”
“It is gone nine o’clock, sir.” Anders’s hand fell back, but he did not step away. “Miss Bennet and her party set out near an hour past. I have been trying to rouse you, but you would not stir. I thought you might be taken ill.”
For a moment, the words hung in the air without meaning. Then they struck all at once.
“Gone?” Darcy pushed himself upright. His body protested. Blood rushed to his head, and the room swayed. He caught at the back of the chair and blinked until the room ceased its slow turn.
“It is not possible. I gave orders to be called at six and no later.”
“I know, sir. The manservant came to tell us that you could not be roused. I came before seven. When I could not wake you, I thought you wished to sleep longer. But when Sir Reginald’s coach left, I grew uneasy and asked after Miss Bennet.
She appears to have gone with the others.
I have been back and forth to you since then, but you have not stirred ’til now. I was about to send for a physician.”
Darcy pressed his fingertips to his temple. His mind lagged, as if it moved through treacle rather than air. His limbs were heavy. His mouth tasted sour.
“What did I drink?” he mumbled.
“Sir?”
“The tea.” He tried to recall the previous night. The stair, the quarrel on the landing, Miss Bennet’s eyes bright with anger and hurt. His own voice, harder than he had intended. The chill of the passage when she left him standing there. The tea he had requested waiting for him in the room.
He had once been given laudanum as a boy. He knew the dull heaviness that followed. Darcy looked at Anders.
“There was something in that pot.”
Anders’s expression darkened. “I thought of that, sir, but the manservant took the teapot away.”
“Find it.” Darcy pushed himself to his feet. The effort set the floor tilting again, but he stood. “Bring it to me. At once.”
Anders hesitated only a heartbeat, then vanished through the open door.
Darcy’s hand shook. He closed it into a fist.
An hour. She had left an hour before. At this rate, with the roads in their present condition, they would be at least five or six miles along the road to London. In Sir Reginald’s carriage. Without him.
He saw her as she had stood upon the landing, face lifted, chin set in defiance. You still believe that I am not who I say I am.
The door crashed back. Anders reappeared with a small earthenware pot upon a tray. Mr. Lowell followed, red-faced and breathless, with a boy close behind.
“Mr. Darcy, sir,” the man puffed. “Your servant is in the greatest taking. He will have it that there is mischief in my tea. I swear to you, it was nothing but—”
Darcy took the pot from the tray. A sticky ring clung to the inside. He lifted it to his nose. The scent rose, not strong but unmistakable. He would never have missed it had he not been so distracted.
“Laudanum,” he said. Not a heavy dose, but more than enough to render a man into a dead, insensible sleep.
He lowered the pot. “You served this to me?” His tone was level. Mr. Lowell's colour, already high, rose further.
“My wife told me Mrs. Hobart did so. Said it was naught but willow bark. That you had taken a chill on the road, that you would not own to it, and she would see to it herself.”
Darcy knew he should be angry, but he could not summon the energy. “And you never thought to alert me that there was something in my tea?”
“You were travelling with the lady, Mr. Darcy.” He frowned. “The quality have done many a strange thing here. We dare not interfere.”
He had no sympathy for the man. “Was Miss Bennet’s tea altered in any manner?”
“She took her tea plain, sir. Naught in it.”
Darcy set the teapot back upon the tray, feeling oddly calm. His gaze fell to the boy by the door. “You. Go tell the ostler to have my horses harnessed to the carriage this instant. If they are not in the traces within ten minutes, I will know the reason.”
The boy bobbed his head, turned, and darted away.
“I will have words for you later, sir,” Darcy told Mr. Lowell. “But I cannot remain just now. Leave us.”
Mr. Lowell apologised and did as he was bid.
Anders lingered.
“Shall I fetch coffee, sir?”
“Yes.” Darcy’s throat was dry. His head pounded. Coffee would aid him if anything would. “But watch them pour it. And have Johnson supervise the ostlers.”
Anders nodded and vanished again. Darcy drew another deep breath, this one feeling like horsehair on the back of his throat and crossed to the small mirror that hung between the two front windows.
The man who looked back at him bore little resemblance, in his own mind, to the person he knew himself to be. His hair was rumpled. His cravat had been loosened in the night and now hung half untied. His complexion was sickly.
He did not know what Sir Reginald and Mrs. Hobart planned to do with Miss Bennet. But given that they had intentionally put him out of the way, he feared for her.
The door opened once more. Anders entered with another pot, an empty cup upon a saucer and a small plate of eggs and toast. He poured a cup of the steaming liquid and set it on the little bedside table along with the food.
“You must eat something, sir,” he said. “I will not see you on the road with naught in your stomach, not after laudanum.”
Darcy’s first impulse was to refuse. There was no time.
They had lost enough of that already. But his hands still shook, and his legs did not feel entirely his own.
He could not afford to be weak upon the road.
Miss Bennet’s safety depended upon his judgement and his endurance, and both were already compromised.
He accepted the cup. The coffee scalded his tongue and throat, and he welcomed the pain. It drove away some of the heaviness that clung to his mind. He swallowed the food without tasting it.
“Anders,” he said, when he had finished. “You saw Miss Bennet leave.”
“Yes, sir. I was in the yard to see to the horses. I watched her come out with Mrs. Hobart. Sir Reginald handed them into his coach. I thought you must know.”
Darcy’s jaw clenched.
“I knew nothing. Sir Reginald and Mrs. Hobart clearly wished it so.”
Anders’s mouth twisted. “I did think it odd, sir, that you had not called for us.”
Darcy drained the cup, filled it again. Ate in small bites. “You had a good look at his conveyance?” They might require a description, and he had not seen it.
“Dark body, sir. Four wheels. Four horses, all bays. The off leader has a white sock and a small nick on the shoulder. I noticed it while they were put to. The harness is older than the coach. There is a noticeable chip in the splashboard on the near side. Postilion rider.”
“Good.” Darcy drew a breath. His head cleared a little more.
He went to the small table where his gloves and hat lay. The act of gathering them calmed him. Here was something he could do. He could put his body in motion, even while his mind was still a bit foggy.
“Have Johnson bring the carriage to the door. I will be down directly.”
Anders bowed. “Yes, sir.” The door closed behind him.
Darcy shrugged into his coat, his fingers fumbling over the button. Though he was frustrated, he forced himself to slow, to attend to each button in turn.
There would be time enough, once they were upon the road, to curse his own folly.
He crossed the room, opened the door, and descended the narrow stair, holding tightly to the banister as he navigated the steps.
The inn’s passage smelt of spilled ale and roasting meat. Men’s voices rang from the common room. No one attempted to stop him. No one met his eye.
In the yard, frost rimed the pump handle and the edges of the trough.
The carriage stood ready. Johnson held the heads of the pair while Anders checked the traces. Both men looked up as Darcy appeared.
“Sir.” Johnson touched a hand to his cap.
“How long will it take us to reach the next posting inn?” Darcy asked.
“In these roads, sir, two hours, if they hold steady. Less, if we press them. The snow is not so deep upon the main road, but the ruts are likely to be bad.”
“They have had at least an hour’s start,” Darcy said. “I mean to make up that time. You will change horses at every stage. You will give them their heads where the road allows it. I am not easy about Miss Bennet’s companions.”
Anders’s eyes gleamed. “They will not get the better of us, sir.”
“Johnson, keep the gun handy.”
“Yes, sir.”
Darcy stepped up into the carriage and let his head drop back against the squabs.
He had tried to warn her, but his temper had outrun his prudence.
He had accused when he should have reasoned.
He had attacked her judgement when he should have appealed to it.
She had heard only that he doubted her. That he thought her vain, or foolish, or both.
What else could she have heard when those were the words he had given her?
To Mrs. Hobart and Sir Reginald, if that was truly who they were, the fact that there were no Thurnian princesses scarcely signified. It was the story that mattered. The story could be used.